Advertisement in the New York Times for bus service to Atlantic City; 10 trips daily and extra weekend service / July 15th 1952

"How many claims has Absecon Beach upon the inhabitants of the Middle States, and more especially upon the people of Philadelphia. There, beneath the exhilarating influence of the saline air and surging surf, we take our summer's salty solace, and shuffle off the accumulation of fatigue under which a winter's weary work has made us suffer. There, too, we meet our old accustomed friends, not to buy and sell—not to talk horse, grain, or iron with them—not to waste the day in wordy wrangle with them about stocks, bonds, and the fluctuations of the gold market—but we meet them to read, convulsed with laughs, the funny bill of fare of an enterprising hotel keeper, who loves to make amusement for his friends by providing them with food for their risible, as well as for their corporeal appetites, and also by providing them with the true pleasure ever experienced in the poetry of motion at the gigantic hops, where the dancing toe keeps step alike, to the music of the band and the eternal symphony of old Ocean."

"she had grown wary" ... "Assumptions that the earth would be there to meether foot when she put it down, or that her body would remain upright without expressly willing it were no longer certain, & she found herself hesitating more than she used to, as though to give the world a chance to announce its true intentions."

~ an excerpt from the story "Leap" in the book "Alone With You" by Marisa Silver (via Mitza)

Paulo's Shecada; and where are the nightcrawlers? / "they are very musical in their tastes, and have wings which are arranged slantwise, like the roof of a house" / circa spring 2013

Now, the cicadas are, almost without Exception, musical. But their song
is produced exclusively by the male insects, who are provided for the
purpose with a curious resonant, drum-like instrument. It consists of a
cavity with a stretched membrane, whose vibration, controlled by
muscles, sets up the familiar chirping or stridulating noise so well
known to all who have lived in Italy. In warm sunshine these insect
vocalists keep up a continuous concert of sweet sounds, intended no
doubt to attract the females. Resonators in the body increase the volume
of the note, and make it carry further; we had one cicada in our house
in Jamaica which sang so loud that we always knew it as the prima donna.
We were wrong in the gender, I admit: we ought rather to have said the
first tenor; for the females have no song: a fact much commented upon by
the malicious Greek poet— doubtless a married man, tied to a loquacious
Athenian lady :—

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

~ an excerpt from Inaugural poet Richard Blanco's poem "One Today" read at the swearing-in ceremony
for President Obama.

"She lives in Swat Valley and was there
several years ago when the Taliban took control and began burning down
girls' schools. The Pakistani army rolled in, in 2009, to retake the
area. Malala wrote an anonymous diary, broadcast on the BBC, about life
under the Taliban. She advocated education for girls, and defied the
militants' ban on this by secretly going to school with her books hidden
in her clothes. Her bravery was recognized last year when she was
nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize." (NPR, Phillip Reeves)

"On Tuesday afternoon, Taliban militants attacked and seriously injured
Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen-year-old campaigner for education for girls
in Mingora, a town in Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s North Western Frontier
Province. Malala was returning home from school when the men attacked; ..." (New Yorker)

"Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right." ~ Malala Yousafzai